Product Description

The nature of God's knowledge of the future, sparked by the openness of God debate, is perhaps the most controversial issue in evangelical circles today. It has generated much heated discussion in venues like the Evangelical Theological Society. Does God Have a Future? counters such intense discourse by pairing Christopher Hall, who affirms the historic Christian or classical view, with John Sanders, one of the foremost proponents of the openness view. For over a year, Hall and Sanders engaged in a friendly yet penetrating e-mail exchange responding to one another's questions and concerns about God's providence and foreknowledge. This book is a compilation of those inquiring e- letters, offering equal handling of both the classical and openness views. Motivated by the belief that evangelicals must learn how to disagree without becoming divisive, they display their respect for each other while vigorously disagreeing about important issues. The e-mail format has produced a series of to-the-point exchanges that make this complex topic more accessible and far more instructive and digestible than a pair of pro-con essays would have been. As such, it is the ideal introduction to the contemporary debate. This book is an expanded version of a two-part article that appeared in Christianity Today in 2001. All those interested in a serious, balanced presentation of the openness debate, without unfair caricatures, will appreciate this theologically sophisticated yet accessible book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1162635 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-01
• Released on: 2003-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
John Sanders (Ph.D., University of South Africa) is professor of religion and theology at Huntington College. He is the author of The God Who Risks and coauthor of The Openness of God. Christopher A. Hall (Ph.D., Drew University) is associate professor of biblical and theological studies at Eastern College. He is an editor at large for Christianity Today and author of Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers.

Customer Reviews

A Future for Openness...
"In essence, in our letters we have tried to embody in our dialogue the prophet Micah's admonition that the Lord requires us to treat each other justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly wt ur God (6:8)." (p. 200)

This is exactly what one finds in this book. Two scholars, Chris Hall (Eastern University) and John Sanders (Huntington College) discuss issues surrounding the nature of God and his relationship with human affairs. Presented in back-and-forth dialogue exchanged via email, this book presents its intentional discussion based upon Christian love and thoughtful understanding rather than reducing theological debate to useless rhetoric and characturization that is often seen in theological disagreements.

This book is a great read for those who are well versed in the issues Openness raises as well as those who are relatively unfamiliar with theological topics of this nature. Both of the authors do a fantastic job of bringing together solid academic with a meaningful, real world, lay understanding. It is obvious that both of these gentlemen have a strong passion for the Church.

Many different topics are engaged in this book - I will not try to recount them here. Know that these authors cut quickly and meaningfully to the heart of the issues, challenging each other to present a solid position. (For those who might not understand, the title derrives from the issue of divine timelessness and impassibility. In other words, does God experience emotion or time...hence, does God have (experience) a future?)

This book will be noted as how theological dialogue ought to be handled. There is pointed argumentation, humorous asides, personal examples, facetious rhetoric, and above all...Christian humility and love.

Both of these theologians admit that they do not have all of the answers, but that they are constantly looking. "Faith seeking understanding."(Anselm)

Divinely Uncertain Free Futures=Conditional Sinlessness
Just the title of this book makes it problematic. While the Biblical position (God has 0% Uncertainty re free futures,i.e. Unconditionally Sinless) is fairly stated, the book leaves the impression it's o.k. that God may have <100% certainty re free futures (i.e.God is conditionally sinless, He can sin).

What this book fails to show from Scripture is that Jesus is OMNI-True(I AM the Way, the Truth..).Christ and all He says is 100% in toto Certifiable Certitude. Yet Sanders' theoreology claims God has been,is,can/will be repeatedly mistaken. Any being that can err, be wrong, hold untruths about the future or be faulty is expressing the capacity to sin.

If it could be shown from Scripture that God was EVER wrong, errant, incorrect (even well-intended,perfect motives), then at that point the deity has sinned. When anyone is less than right about anything(predicting future probabilities), he has sinned either by omission (falling short of actuality) or commission (overshooting the mark of Truth). Sanders' view reduces the Creator to creature level.

Under Sanders' 'divine riskiness theory', if God forecasts or probabilizes with a measure of uncertainty, we call that a +/-
factor of inaccuracy/deviation or MARGIN OF ERROR. Since SIN by def'n is 'missing the mark','not hitting target','falling short of goal','failure to fully comply','offness','deviation/detour',
'mis-aim', then God must manifest His deity towards us with a self-limiting, relational 'errancy index' or 'fault component'. In other words, a divine 'sin factor' is built into God's relations with us as a given based on the intrinsic uncertainty of our free futures' actual outcomes lining up with His less than certain probabilizing expectancy of all possible options.

What's the unintended consequence for Open Theory? Our imperfect
'libertarian freedom' inherently conditions God's divine attributes (His Perfect Libertarian Freedom) such as Knowledge,

Power,Will,Judgment,Reasoning,Relationality,Deduction, Foresight
Intuitive skill, etc. with a MARGIN OF ERROR,MISTAKABILITY,
FALLIBILITY,OFFNESS,DEVIATION,FAILURE RATE,i.e. SIN.

What Sanders&Boyd&Pinnock&Co. fail to grasp is that our very freedom causes God by definition to knowingly maybe-err while unwittingly(?)maybe-sinning as a result of holding potentially wrong notions/ideas. He is at times NOT vindicated when actual ballots are cast and votes tallied. From Genesis Day One, of all the uncertain probables God has known, how many ultimately prove untrue when known for certain is God's ERROR RATE, batting avg.,Win/Loss record, i.e. SIN CAPACITY INDEX.

Sanders' 'Uncertain Futurism' inherently nullifies God's Libertarian Freedom to be UNCONDITIONALLY SINLESS. A RIGHTEOUS Being Whose perfect projections turn out proven false is no longer a Right Being,but a Wrong one.If in fact our freedom'Pre-determines as uncertain'divine foreknowledge of future choices and sets the parameters of What God Can Know and When He Can Know It, Uncertainism finitizes God to creature levels rendering Him a sinner, although a Perfect One. When(not if) God sins as the divine knowledge base proves unfounded in retrospect, He sins Perfectly, however justifiable or rare.

Where does that leave the reader of this less-than-certain understanding of Biblical facts?

Either Jesus is Unconditionally ALL RIGHT ALL THE TIME or not.
Either God's Libertarian Freedom DOES NOT hamper ours, or ours hampers His.

Sanders would have us believe the nature/extent of our Libertarian Freedom entails that God has,is,will and in fact
MUST (can't help but) err, be incorrect at times, i.e. SIN whenever future actualization fails to corroborate God's expectation of probable outcomes.

GOD'S CERTAINTY AND RIGHTNESS/WRONGNESS,TRUENESS/FALSENESS IS CONTINGENT ON WHAT OUR FUTURE FREEDOM CONFINES HIM TO, NEGATING GOD'S FREEDOM TO NOT EVER BE PROVEN WRONG OR TO BE UNCONDITIONALLY SINLESS. Sander's deity is Conditionally Sinless
which means Conditionally Sinning.

Sanders is trapped by the necessary certainty of Uncertainism: Hindsight proves God's foresight contra-decided when any less probable futures falsify prior divine expectancy as they become borne-out factuals. In the divine mind, Mystery evolves/unveils into History with constant memory updating, intelligence gathering correctives and ever-increasing uncoverage of hitherto unknowables.

Mr. Hall is correct.
What does God know? ALL as CERTAIN/CERTAINLY NOT.

When does God know it? ALWAYS HAS, ALWAYS WILL.

Only this Biblical understanding safeguards the LORD from being identified with error, wrongness, creatureliness,faultiness,
mistakenness, failing, fallibility, uncertainty, falsehood, untruth, i.e. SIN.

One star for Mr. Hall's exposition of what the Bible teaches.
Four stars deducted for Mr. Sanders' unbiblical theoreology being posited as an 'alternate view'.It is actually DEVANGELICAL